


If You Must

by evil_bunny_king



Series: Of the Sun [7]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abora Lavellan, Conversations, Discussions about memory and loss, F/M, Forehead Kisses, Oops, Sleepy Kisses, all the kisses, but fluffy as hell nevertheless, nose kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 03:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3795226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They may be gone, yes, but their final act is still very much alive, as is their meaning: we will not be forgotten. I feel it like a weight, sometimes. Do you know what I mean?”</p><p>The look that Solas was giving her was almost unreadable, save for the sorrow that gathered in the corners of his eyes. He glanced down at their joined hands, ran his thumb along the ridge of her wrist.</p><p>“I believe I do.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Must

The forest of the Graves creaked around the tent, the last patters of rainfall from the passing storm crackling against the canvas above. Lavellan squeezed her eyelids shut against it, trying to force herself into sleep. It was no use, though. She could still feel the weight of dead eyes almost pressing into her skin, a tension of awareness that prickled the hairs at the back of her neck, coiling in her shoulders.

The emerald graves were groaning. The sound of it shuddered through her, tree trunks and branches snapping in the wind, scrambling against each other as if they were fighting to wrench themselves from the earth that held them. As if the mourned had returned to animate their wood-locked corpses once more. She shivered and dug further under her furs, trying to think of something else; anything.

But by the gods, she hated the Graves. It was odd to hate something so beautiful, so vibrantly alive, but she could never shake the faint sense of horror that settled over her whenever she was called back here, itching under her skin. These forests marked the decimation of a broken people - her people, and it felt wrong to linger under them - worse to disturb the ruins they had lovingly put to rest. Yet that’s what they were here to do.

After a while she abandoned her efforts and sat up, clutching her bedding to her chest. She could barely see a thing - what moonlight that could pierce the canopy smothered by the storm, the watch fires banked - but she opened her eyes anyway, gazing into the darkness.

Across the camp before her she knew lay the statue of a wolf.

A memorial to the Emerald Knights, Solas had murmured when they’d first arrived, and she didn’t doubt it, though time had weathered the carved epitaph beyond legibility. It crouched in the remains of a tiered hall whose walls were for the most part still standing; an undeniably ideal defensive position, although her stomach had twisted as the inquisition’s soldiers had industrially cleared away the debris and bracken.

But how could she have explained to them, or even to her companions, what the reclaiming of the ruins from the forest meant? She hardly understood her discomfort herself - it was unlike her, and that unsettled her as much as the invasion. The dead cared nothing for the material world. They were gone, passed to the beyond with no need for what they'd left in their wake. It shouldn’t matter that the trees had thrived on the lives that had fed them, swallowing flesh and stone alike. That the humans and elves that followed had thrived in turn on the fruits of those forests.

The inquisition had settled around the wolf’s blank gaze, and even Solas had afforded the worn stone little more than a mediated glance before they’d gathered under it to discuss their plans for the days ahead.

It was its eyes that she’d felt pressing against her through the night, weighing through the tent walls despite the distance and the rain.

Snorting, she abandoned her bedroll, scooting towards her clothing and roughly pulling on her leggings and tunic.

She wasn’t going to get any sleep like this. The majority of the night had already passed as she’d tossed and turned, restlessly dreaming or listening to the storm. The rain was ending now, though. Perhaps the fresh air would help.

She laced up her boots, grabbed her cloak and pushed quietly into the campsite.

The evening was almost eerily calm after the rage of the squall, and fabric and stone glistened in its aftermath, a sullen dripping echoing from the corners of the ruin. She picked a path carefully over slicked flagstones and made her way to the enclosed fire-pit, exchanging a brief nod with the watch guard who sat opposite the main exit from the camp, their back to the flames.

It was still a ways before dawn – she could barely distinguish between leaf and sky above, the darkness almost complete outside of the halo of the camp fires. The flicker of the firelight was soothing, though, as was the warm damp smell of earth and undergrowth, scoured clean, and she hovered there, allowing her breathing to slip slow and deep.

If she closed her eyes, she was almost back in the fringes of the Planasene, surrounded by the mess of the mercenary troup, Gryff’s snores audible no matter the weather. Where the smell of the soil whispered of nothing but the wilderness, free of the ache of unknowable loss.

The rustle of an opening tent flap drew her back to the present, and she turned to find Solas emerging from the tent behind her, his worn coat drawn securely around him. He paused when he saw her, surprise creasing his features, before a small smile took its place and he straightened, allowing the tent-flap to fall back behind him.

“Inquisitor. I did not expect to find anyone still awake.”

She smiled at the warmth of his voice, ever so slightly rasped with the hint of sleep, and shifted to make room for him. The flames cast shifting shadows across his features as he joined her by the fire, gathering in the hollows of his eyes, exaggerating the sharp edge of his jaw. He looked tired.

“Solas.” She reached up to trace his cheek, smiling again as the faint wrinkles of strain smoothed at her touch.

It felt good to be able to reach out to him like this, to soothe, even without knowing the cause. She wondered what was haunting him, if he’d share it with her if she asked. For all they’d gotten closer in the past few months, he remained as ever reserved, softening only slowly.

He raised his hand to cover hers, eyelids lowering, and turned into her palm to lay a gentle kiss there, lips pressing tenderly against her skin.

“That was not an answer, vhenan,” he murmured, raising an eyebrow. He pulled her hand down and away, although he kept his fingers clasped around hers.

“I hadn’t realised you were asking the question,” she retorted, briefly delighting in the way his eyebrow quirked higher. But then she sighed, turning back to the flames.

She was exhausted, and it undoubtedly showed. The reasons why were not as easy to explain, though- particularly as she suspected he would scoff at another example of her so-called ‘Dalish superstitions’.

But surely, he felt it as well. Perhaps that’s why he, too, was still awake, even considering his rejection of the clans. The fall of the Dales was all of their heritage, after all.

“It’s nothing important. Not really. It’s just that I find this area…” She gestured to their surroundings, encompassing the forest, the ruins, the wolf. “Unsettling, given what occurred here. I can ignore it, normally, but tonight I couldn’t.”

The eyebrow remained raised, although it was tempered with gentle concern, and his hand squeezed hers, warm in its grip. “Do you fear their ghosts, ‘ma’lath?”

“No. No, it’s… No.” She had wondered if that was it, but it was the wolf whose eyes caught her, who lingered in her thoughts. “Their souls are long gone, I know that. And it is not a fear, either, but rather - an awareness, the knowledge of what these forests represent.”

She caught his eye, wresting the words from her tongue. It was at times like this that she wished that she had Varric’s eloquence. “An entire people ended here, our people, and these trees were their last defiance. A statement of their resilience, their anguish, their will.” She gave a small shrug, settling her cloak more firmly around her shoulders. “They may be gone, yes, but their final act is still very much alive, as is their meaning: we will not be forgotten. I feel it like a weight, sometimes.” Another shrug, hopeless. “Do you know what I mean?”

The look that Solas gave her was almost unreadable, save for the sorrow that gathered in the corners of his eyes, but the understanding was clear – yes, he did. He glanced down at their joined hands, ran his thumb along the ridge of her wrist.

“I believe I do.” His thumb smoothed up to her knuckles. “The fade is heavy with it, the veil thin from the spirits drawn to its call. Perhaps that is what you’re experiencing.”

After so much pain, so much loss - she could almost imagine what the Graves must look like in Fade, the fragments of memories aped endlessly in that green fog. How it must look to him. She regretted her earlier doubt with a spike of guilt, and squeazed his hand in hers. He was skeptical of her people's conduct and traditions, yes, but he wasn't indifferent. She _knew_ that.

It was a moment before he looked up, but when he did he offered her a smile, thoughtful, somber. Reflected firelight dancing in his eyes, burning the irises gold. “It is worth remembering, nevertheless, that these trees are merely symbols, vhenan; representations truly understandable only to those who planted them. They reflect their creator’s intent to mark an existence, to represent their memory of one dead, but the symbol does not retain the memory itself. It cannot. It is meaningless until given meaning, empty until filled by those who recognises them.”

He reached forward with his free hand, tenderly carding her hair back away from her forehead, and she leant absently into the touch, considering him as he spoke. The flickers of emotion that softened his tone.

“You see them as the memorials to a lost homeland, of lives lost through ignorance, a promise of survival. But think of what they must’ve meant to the brother who buried a sister – the person he recalled as he watched that sapling flourish, the memories he affixed to her name. Her enemy would recall her quite differently, would they not?”

He smiled again, using their joined hands to draw her gently closer and place a soft kiss on her brow.

“It is your memory, your knowledge of their meaning, which gives the forests the weight you perceive.” The words were murmured into her hair, hands sliding gently up her forearms and curling around to her back. She sank into the embrace. “Even in the fade, it is not these trees that linger, but what came before. How they affect you depends solely on how you receive them. Realising such can be a balm.”

She frowned, pushing away slightly to peer into his face.  “Even if the meaning is mine, Solas, it doesn’t change the fact that what they represent happened - and that they are what remains of an entire people. Our people. Are you saying that should be forgotten?”

His hands settled at her waist and he let out a soft breath, the silence of the sleeping campsite gathering around them as if the trees themselves were rapt with attention.

“No. Not forgotten,” he answered quietly. “ Accepted. Acknowledge that they were wronged, that they were massacred; remember their existence, and mourn their loss. But accept that they are gone. This forest bears no real trace of them, vhenan – it at least should not haunt you. And to linger on loss will only slow you, withhold you from doing what you must for those that live on.”

His grip tightened subtly with the words, a strange expression entering into his eyes – a sadness, coupled with an intensity burned in his pale features. “Honour them in deeds, not with regret.”

She stared back at up at him with surprise, caught in the _honesty_ imbuing his words. This was- more than just the Graves, than history lived through distortions of memory. Once again he was speaking with a _certainty_ that weighed of experience, painful and carried - and once again she wondered after it, as much as she knew she shouldn't.

What had he seen that had inspired such reflection? Where exactly had his wanderings taken him, who had he lost?

Had he had a family, once?

She shook the thoughts away, satisfying herself with a small sigh in their stead, swaying back into the cradle of his arms. She wouldn't dwell on it - in respect of his privacy, her sanity; as much as she wished she could help alleviate his burdens. In any case, he was right. The elves of the Dales were long gone, any aspect of who they had been and the ways they'd known the world taken with them. Nothing, not even these forests, could hope to preserve that. It was, in its way, a balm.

She curled her hands in his tunic, giving him a wry smile.

“You’re right, of course.” Using her grip as leverage she rocked forward, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips, allowing the contact to linger, his breath to mingle with hers. “I’ll try.”

His answering smile was warm, the edge of a teasing smirk slanting its corners, if touched with an irony she couldn’t place. “Do.”

She rolled her eyes, but grinned despite herself at his responding chuckle.

“Ass.”

She stole another kiss before settling back onto her heels, settling against his chest, content. It was only then that she caught sight of the statue in the corner of the camp. Captured in dutiful languidity, the wolf lounged at the edge of the firelight, its pelt pock-marked and split, the carefully-carved paws folded neatly beneath a snout raised permanently in attention. It watched the two of them with eyes that had survived relatively untouched; sightless, blank.

She looked away and refocused on the man before her, bringing her hands up to cup his face; breathed him in, the smell of elfroot and oilskin, the hide of the cord that hung around his neck.

Yes, he was right, in more ways than one. Inherited pain still haunted the surrounding woods, but in this moment there was just the two of them, living, feeling, estranged from a drowsing world. A moment where they could breathe and be, and one that she would treasure, all too fleeting as it was. She'd didn't know if they would last. As much as she wanted them to. There were distances that gaped between them, vast and guarded, and she didn't know if they would ever be breached, if they even could. But here - here, in this moment, they could linger, for a while; shake away their burdens, their ghosts. The dead were gone, for all that they were mourned, and the living moved on.

Grazing her thumbs against the edges of his jaw, she bent forward and kissed him again, biting gently at his lower lip, sweeping her tongue inside his mouth as he moaned in appreciation, a soft, low sound. She shifted closer, pressing herself into the heat of him, trying to impart herself- the swell of her affection, her passion, her care. His response burned deliciously through her, her skin flushing at the tenderness in the way he held her, the devotion in his touch. His hands dragged up her back to cradle her head, tangling in her hair, mouth and tongue moving so slowly but so deliberately against hers.

Eventually they broke away, both laughing through huffed breaths, still locked in each other’s arms. Abora sighed, content, drinking in the brightness of his eyes, his swollen lips, the slight quirk of his open smile.

Her dear burdened man.

She had to clear her throat before she was able to speak, an act that sent him into laughter once more, and she spoke the words through her helpless smile, unable to restrain it.

“And what about you?” She drew her thumb across his cheek, looking into his eyes, a part of her rejoicing at the joy she found there _._ “Didn't you have trouble sleeping as well?”

He gave her another smile, expression soft, gaze trailing across her features in an almost tangible caress before meeting hers once more. “I did. But it doesn't matter now.”

Bending forward, he laid a soft kiss on the tip of her nose, smirking as she scrunched it against the assault. And then it was his turn to sigh, his exhaustion making itself apparent, and he carefully untangled himself from her grasp, chuckling as she reluctantly released her grip.

“Come. We should try and sleep, at least, before we have to face the duties of the oncoming day.”

She stepped away, a grumble readying itself on the edge of her lips – but they fell away as he snagged her hand once more, keeping her close as he turned back towards her tent. He raised his eyebrows at her obvious surprise, a playful invitation in his suppressed smile.

“Do you not agree?”

She laughed, rich and free, and allowed him to tow her across the camp.

**Author's Note:**

> Playing as Lavellan made the Emerald Graves much more disconcerting the second time around, although I’ve always found it a little creepy. Not enough to stop me from claiming the logging stands, though… I’m a horrible person. Chronologically this is set any time after the completion of his companion quest, but before the Winter Palace because I have _reams_ of notes on the conversation that follows their return from there (surely I can't be the only person who was ticked off by that one). The inquisitor is kept for the most part undefined so people could picture their own, but a few references to my rogue Lavellan, Abora, did sneak in.
> 
> Title alludes to [Keaton Henson’s - ‘You’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2fCcggNkTs) which fits this so nicely, if delving into trauma that unfolds more later. :3 Such a fan of Keaton Henson, kept me company when I studied abroad. :3


End file.
